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View Full Version : Hi guys. so uh, I'm a band. Any tips?



punkonjunk1024
01-25-2010, 09:20 AM
Apparently, I've been unbanned. At least, seemingly.
I appreciate it to whoever or whatever is responsible.

So uh. Since I was like a kid, I wanted to do this band thing. First of course, it was all punk rawk. As my tastes evolved, so did my fantasies. Finally, my roommates wanted to start a band, and I was all like I'll write and frontman, lols, and uh... well that sat around and got talked about for a year.

So now I'm teaching myself piano and theremin. And I'm composing music. I'm about 70% to a completed track, then mastering, then demo city. I'd say about 2 months out from an EP. Short album? Music is new to me. I'm seriously... untrained.
I'm taking some photos for the cover art soon. The title of the album is "mala fides"
Oh, and the band is "Hecatonchires"
So uh, yeah. I'm posting about it NOW because I'd love some input SOON when I have a demo mastered and up. And this is definately about the harshest community i'm a part of on the internet, and although I'm sure I'll get a lot of stock negative comments, I'd likely get more true criticism here than anywhere else.

The genre is basically noise rock sans guitars, so far. Influences on the sound would most prominently be the paper chase, followed by things along the lines of the chinese stars, 31knots and brainiac.

My current questions are this:
I'm not familiar with recording much at all. So far I'm using mixcraft 4, and I'm doing somewhat simple loop based stuff, grabbing one or two measures at a time that sound nice and looping them, except of course for vocals and the actual like, piano melody. So the things I need are additional instrument definitions (I believe it uses VSTi's, but I'm somewhat underread so far)
I'm also downloading the Vienna philharmonic orchestra pro performance sweet software, which comes heavily recommended by a friend (like he wouldn't shut up about it until I started this 60gb frickin' download) - anyone with any experience? Is it novice friendly by any means, at least compared to mixcraft?
is anyone here into like, noise rock at all?
Also, as far as production goes... Where can I get cheap, bulk CD jewel cases, the full 10mm ones, not the slim ones? Anyone have templates or measurements or programs or info on designing and printing a sleeve, or a site that does it for you for moderate pricing? I'm looking to get about 50-100 copies made for under 100 dollars. I'm hoping to use lightscribe CDs and have a full color, semigloss or full gloss cd book/insert and thing on the front and back. I'm willing to spend a decent ammount on this if it's super good quality, but my girlfriend is a graphic designer in college, so I have access to some pretty cool printing stuff too, if it'd be easier to just get templates, with that in mind.
any other words of warning/encouragement regarding methods I've disclosed so far or anythign in general about music? I'm seriously having a lot of fun so far, I've spent a tooon of time on this!
The hardest part so far is making lyrics work with the song. I always thought I had a reasonable grasp on meter but this has shown me that I lack some of the fluidity I'd like to have. I'm learning so much, and I can't believe how quickly my writing has grown.

and as for everything else, my life is totally awesome, but I need to go to bed, it's 7am here in WI. I missed AGN!

ZTC
01-30-2010, 03:48 PM
You didn't go with the Symphonic version Vienna? It's like 100GB. ;3 Haven't heard too much about it though. For getting jewel cases, try half.com, buy.com and overstock. All I can say is good luck and keep having fun!

Lilith
02-02-2010, 04:07 AM
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punkonjunk1024
02-10-2010, 07:43 AM
I know, they're awesome. After I started "learning" I started hearing them in a TON of bands. Like a ridiculous ton. From Devotchka to one ring zero. It's weird.
I suck ass at them. For now, mine'll be used for ambiance. I haven't quite picked up an ear for playing it yet, but it's coming slowly. I can find E just fine, a moderately low E, but everything gets messy from there, especially when I try to get the vibrato going. I can do some bitchin' vibrato, I just can't really keep my arm in place too well.

And I got all the logistics and pricing worked out for both vinyl and CDs, found a place that takes care of the glass master, and presses runs from a couple hundred to 10K for cheap. a run of 1000 full color profession glossy CD inserts with 4 pages totals exactly 1 thousand dollars. A run of 100 clear vinyl albums will be around 1000 dollars, too. So that's not bad, at all. I'm picking myself up a set of tubular bells or studio chimes pretty soon here, finishing my junk drumset, and getting myself some temple blocks in the coming months. The junk set is turning out great, so far. Just need to get weldin'.

The dynamic of this versus just simple writing is amazing. I wish I'd just got off my ass and tried to do this a decade ago.

And if anyone wants to add my band on facebook, here's the page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hecatonchires/281814318872

Demo "soon".
Hopefully tomorrow. In all likelyhood, I'll continue assuming a week or so. Goddamnit I need to stop tweaking.